Yes, it's a man's life in 1860s Sicily. Well, if you happen to be a Prince commanding a substantial kingdom. all the quails you can eat, etc., anyway. The man in this happy position is Fabrizio, patriarch of the aristocratic Salina family, and a generally impressive and physically imposing individual (as befits the leopard which is the family crest), knocking on towards middle age but still capable of taking a carriage down to the local village for a bit of recreational whoring, coming back to the family castle and after nothing more than a quick reviving limoncello administering a teeth-rattling seeing-to to the wife as well before a hearty breakfast.
Italy at this stage in its history doesn't really exist as a nation-state in the modern sense, being instead a series of contiguous kingdoms controlled by various aristocratic families. But changes are afoot - various coarse and malodorous proletarian types are agitating for the formation of a united Italy, including a group under the leadership of Giuseppe Garibaldi, taking some time off from inventing biscuits to do a bit of the old revolution.
The Prince is an intelligent and thoughtful man, and realises that the changes that are probably inevitable will have a major impact on him and his family, but also recognises that there is little he can directly do to influence the tide of history. In any case, there are local and family matters to attend to, including the betrothal of his nephew Tancredi to Angelica, the daughter of the local mayor. Tancredi is marrying a bit below himself socially here, but the complex calculations involved in making a good and mutually beneficial marriage have to take into account the fact that Angelica's father is absurdly rich, while the Salinas, despite possessing aristocratic pedigree up the wazoo, are a bit strapped for cash.
With the possible end to his family's rule over their portion of Sicily in sight, Fabrizio has cause to reflect on questions like: what is the point of any of it, really? The strategic marriages, the endless social whirl, the dinner parties that no-one particularly enjoys and which serve merely as an opportunity for the hosts to show off their wealth and their cooks to show off their abilities to slaughter various items of local wildlife and stuff them inside each other.
Fast-forward 25 years or so to 1883 and we find Fabrizio contemplating the end of his life as he sits in a bath-chair on a hotel balcony. Suffering what we are probably meant to infer is a series of strokes, he drifts further into his own internal thoughts as people rush around him moving him onto the bed and administering the last rites. Has Tancredi's marriage to Angelica been of any benefit politically, since it seems not to have been as happy as they'd hoped personally? Will he, Fabrizio, be the last of his line as Prince? What will become of Sicily and the new Italy?
Finally we jump another quarter of a century to 1910 and see what is left of the Salinas dynasty: basically not much except Fabrizio's elderly daughters overseeing what remains of their property. The ruthless utilitarian march of progress is represented here by the state overseer of religious relics who visits and conducts an audit of the family chapel, declares most of the supposed relics housed there to be worthless (and in some cases blasphemous) and orders their removal.
As always, write about what you know is a good maxim for a first novel; in this case an only novel as The Leopard was published a year or so after Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's death in 1957. He was himself the last of a line of Sicilian princes, a line which ended in 1946 when Italy abolished its monarchy and became a republic. Its posthumous publication adds it to a short and ill-defined (and quite possibly incomplete) list on this blog which certainly includes Notice, The Book Of Ebenezer Le Page and all three of the Stieg Larssons. Previous books on this list which were originally published in Italian include Invisible Cities, The Name Of The Rose and Foucault's Pendulum. A not-particularly-up-to-date list including other languages can be found here. Lastly, the themes being explored here of privileged types contemplating the end of an era about to be swept away by momentous events are a bit reminiscent of The Shooting Party.
Anyway, it's very good, wryly and slyly humorous and doesn't wed itself to any particularly firm position on the regime that Fabrizio represents or the one which is about to replace it: sure, the whole idea of inherited ruling privilege is a bit absurd, and while Fabrizio himself is a benign and (relatively) progressive figure the system has nothing in place to prevent the odd insane tyrant popping up in the line of succession. But is the alternative better? And even if it is, does it justify the inevitable upheaval and bloodshed in bringing it about? The fact that it's taken me over a month to read a relatively short book (just over 200 pages) shouldn't be taken to mean that it's indigestible or forbidding, more that it's been Christmas and solitude (and therefore reading opportunities) has been hard to come by.
The Leopard was famously made into a film in 1963 starring Burt Lancaster, something which might make you think: wow, I didn't know Burt Lancaster spoke Italian. Well, he may or may not have done, but his lines were delivered in English (and dubbed into Italian for the Italian version) while most of the cast delivered their lines in Italian (which was dubbed into English for the English version), something I would imagine might have made the filming a bit confusing. Like many people I became aware of Luchino Visconti's oeuvre through the potted summary delivered by Inspector Leopard here.
